I have a thing for old black and white movies. Especially in anxious times, they slow me down and calm me. I think it has to do with telling a single story rather than flooding viewers with a barrage of plotlines, images, and settings. It almost feels as if someone is reading to me. I don’t know if you share this taste, but one of my regular peak experiences is being read to while I’m cooking. These days, I watch old movies while I do my exercises in the morning, and feel a little more able to face the day.
This past week I watched The Mortal Storm, a 1940 film directed by Frank Borzage that chronicles the impact of Hitler’s rise on one family. It was rapturously reviewed at the time by the likes of Bosley Crowther in the New York Times. It was adapted from a 1937 novel by Phyllis Bottome, a British writer married to a diplomat/MI6 agent whose work provided her with firsthand knowledge of the rise of fascism in Germany.
The film was released a year and a half before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, triggering the official entry of the United States into World War II. It seems to be the only Hollywood film that overtly criticized Hitler before the US entered the war. As such, it has a tiptoe quality. Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz!) plays beloved Professor Viktor Roth, head of a mixed family comprising the son and daughter of his marriage to a non-Jew and two adult stepsons. The word “Jew” never appears in the film. “Non-Aryan” usually substitutes. That omission struck me as a kind of cowardice on the one hand (or maybe a simple marketing ploy), and on the other a clever dramatic device, making it easier for non-Jewish viewers to see themselves as potential targets of the rise of fascism and brutality the film depicts.
At this distance in history, the casting is unbelievably brilliant. Professor Roth’s daughter Freya (played by Margaret Sullavan) is pursued by rival suitors played by two supremely boy-next-door all-American actors, Robert Young as Fritz Marburg, and James Stewart as Martin Breitner. As the tale unfolds, Young is the first to win Sullavan’s hand, but he simultaneously becomes quickly and utterly enamored of Hitler. Stewart, seeing what is coming, stands from the first for human rights and freedom, becoming the film’s hero.
I was mesmerized. Almost every scene depicting the gradual descent of a diverse and accepting community into vicious othering and horrifying cruelty made me pause the video to think about what is happening in this country today. Seeing the stars of Father Knows Best and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington choose to harden their hearts or leap over their fears as Hitler overtakes every aspect of life adds to a strong sense that it can indeed happen here.
Early in the film Professor Roth’s birthday is lavishly celebrated at the dinner table, following an even grander display of good wishes at the university that morning. The housekeeper rushes in from the kitchen to share what she calls wonderful news. Her announcement is amplified by some members of the household, regarded with concern by others, and contextualized by a radio announcer:
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We have just heard… they have made Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany!
Why, that’s stupendous! If it’s true. Is it official?
It is true! It is official! It’s coming in on all the stations! Let’s find out! Let’s get the radio.
(The professor to his wife) Adolf Hitler chancellor. And appointed by Hindenburg. What can he be thinking of?
The news swept the capital like wildfire. The delirious frenzy of the people defies description! Thousands of men and women are gathered outside the chancellery. They’ve waited here for hours, hoping for a glimpse of our great leader, our new chancellor!
This sounded uncomfortably familiar to me.
- (Freya’s suitor Fritz speaks and others respond.) Things will happen now.
What will happen now?
We’ll see a new Germany.
I hope it’s best for all, this change.
Why, it means our country will be strong and powerful again, Frau Professor. Master of Europe and the world!
Fritz, I’ve never seen you so enthusiastic.
Freya, this is Germany’s crying need…a strong man in a saddle. A leader who will fight for victory!
Fritz is right. You can’t put Germany back in her old place without bayonets. Hitler will only demand what is ours by right. Nations who want peace have nothing to fear. And if they want war, by heaven, they’ll get it!
But Fritz, now that this man’s come to power, what about those who think differently? Freely? Those who are non-Aryan?
There’s no cause for alarm, my dear. Your mother’s worried about me, I think.
But that’s nonsense, Mother. Men like Father are an honor to Germany. Of course. Men will be judged on their merits, their records.
Martin (Stewart) demurs, speaking of human rights. The other men try to browbeat him into attending a gathering to celebrate Hitler’s victory, but he refuses. He tells them to tell their leader that “peasants have no politics, they keep cows.” Fritz (Young) coldly replies: “They want to keep their cows, they better have the right politics,” foreshadowing all that is to come.
In subsequent scenes, the situation becomes increasingly heated. An aging teacher eating dinner at a beer hall refuses to join in “The Horst Wessel Song” and is attacked by brown-shirted thugs despite Martin’s and Freya’s attempt to save him. Freya is dismissed as a mere woman, Martin as “pacifist vermin.” At the university, Professor Roth’s lesson on blood (his pupils are preparing to be scientists, doctors, or veterinarians) is disrupted by students who denounce his unwillingness to say that Aryan blood is superior to that of other races. “It’s a direct contradiction to our leader’s principle of racial purity! It’s an impudent defense of racial degeneration, and it’s a lie!”
When you read that, did you think about Robert Kennedy Jr.’s statement that COVID was created to be easier on Asians and Ashkenazi Jews? About his withdrawal of proven vaccines? When I watched those scenes, I did.
The class is boycotted. Books are burned in time to a chant: “We burn you, Albert Einstein, because you have advanced a false and pretentious theory! We burn you! We burn you!”
Farm workers are arrested. Professor Roth loses his job. Martin is forbidden by Freya’s Nazi brothers from visiting her. Martin helps the old teacher who was beaten at the beer hall to escape arrest, taking an arduous snowbound route over a mountain pass, certain he cannot return home. In his absence, thugs enter and search his house, terrifying his mother, their serving girl, and Freya, who is threatened with a concentration camp.
When you read that, did you think of masked ICE agents scooping up immigrants and citizens alike, rendering them to El Salvador or South Sudan? When I watched those scenes, I did.
Much more happens, each episode descending another rung on the bloody ladder to fascist hell. The film is explicit in showing how the Nazi regime persecutes people for thought crimes, bringing to mind the MAGA crusade against higher education. Unlike many Hollywood films, the hopeful note it ends on is covered in shadows. There is no rainbow.
I wish someone would make the equivalent film now. Not a documentary but a narrative feature depicting the job loss, suffering, and death from the withdrawal of sustenance and healthcare, kidnapping, imprisonment, torture, censorship, and all else leading us down the same path; and the human capacity to resist and prevail. I imagine it could have a similar impact to The Mortal Storm, awakening people who don’t necessarily follow the news to the real-life horror story unfolding around us and their own relationships to it.
“The Partisan,” Leonard Cohen’s version of La Complaint du Partisan, a 1943 French anti-fascist song.